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Krissy Scotten scooped up a pile of pingpong-ball-sized hail left over from severe thunderstorms and dropped it almost immediately.

“It was like holding ice,” the warning coordination meteorologist said Thursday.

Scotten, two other meteorologists from the National Weather Service in Amarillo and two emergency management personnel reviewed the damage Thursday near U.S. Highway 287 after severe thunderstorms pounded the Texas Panhandle the night before. The thunderstorms rolled into the region shortly after 2 p.m. Wednesday and left behind several feet of hail and rain in some areas, meteorologists said.

“We drove past most of it because it seemed like dirt,” Scotten said. “We turned around and stopped at one small pile and saw white specks mixed in the mud.”

Texas Department of Transportation officials closed southbound lanes of U.S. 287 for about seven hours Wednesday after rainwater runoff washed hail into drifts up to 4 feet high, officials said.

Paul Braun, spokesman for Amarillo’s division of TxDOT, said officials stopped drivers in Dumas because of the flooded roads.

TxDOT crews worked through the morning, using snow plows, front-end loaders and road maintainers to clear the hail and mud from the highway, he said.

TxDOT officials reopened the road about 12:30 a.m. Thursday, but remaining water on the roadways caused traffic to inch along in the morning, Braun said.

Scotten said the hail is likely to stick around for a couple days before it melts.

Meteorologists said an embankment near the Canadian River bridge was severely eroded by the rainwater, but highway officials did not report any damage to the roads.